Yonggungsa, Busan

If there's anything you ought to do before clicking that little confirmation button of your flight ticket booking, it is to check the weather of your travel destination. This is the golden rule - check, check, and check again because weather forecasts aren't entirely predictable and are subject to change. Being impossibly excited about going to South Korea in the summer and more focused on avoiding the holiday peak periods, I went on the local Skyscanner, found the cheapest acceptable flight available and got 'em ticks. 

It was a bad choice (can someone call Minor Mistake Marvin for me, please?). Immediately after, when I set forth to plan the itinerary, I finally checked the weather and I saw squares of white clouds and a random square of sun speckled in grids of dark clouds. 2 weeks later, all I saw were clouds and they were mostly grey. My heart fell out. As it turns out, summer in Korea is not exactly the sunniest in July, in fact it is the peak of monsoon season.

On one of the nights in Seoul when we were having dinner with our incredibly hospitable friend and her family, we saw reports of billowing winds in Busan on the family TV. They told us, "You should cancel your plans to Busan, the monsoon is especially bad there and people have gotten injured". I was so dismayed - now the train tickets would go to waste and there goes some of the nicest sites I've been looking forward to. 

Well, Lady Luck was particularly kind and we made it to beautiful Busan sans probleme. On a late afternoon, we set off to Yonggungsa Temple. I dare say that Yonggungsa is easily one of the most underrated attraction in Korea, which I suppose is due to the rather inaccessible area. If I do recall correctly, we spent an hour to get there and another one back on one of the worst bus rides possible and there is a (rather horrifying, which I am guessing is a kilometre) walking distance between the temple and the bus stop.

Anyhow, the costal temple was absolutely breathtaking and easily the most serene place I've ever been, and all the trouble we went through for it was completely worth it. 

To get there: Take Bus 181 after coming out from Exit 7 of Haeundae Station and get off at Yonggungsa, which is one of the last stops where everyone gets off. The way I managed to keep track of which stops we were at and where we would be due was with the help of my minimal Korean reading abilities, which I found extremely helpful when taking Korean buses. 

126Mansion

In the first stages of planning for the #sœursinseoul trip, our initial idea was to go on Airbnb to hunt around for a nice, comfortable accommodation. We had actually narrowed down to just a few choices when somehow, somewhen, we chanced upon 126Mansion and it was love at first sight. 

Travelling out on the days of our stay here were easy. Set somewhere in between the Gyeongbukgung and the Bukchon Hanok Maeul, in close proximity to the Blue House - South Korea's equivalent of the White House, it was not the nearest from the metro station yet still convenient enough for us to travel to multiple places all in one day. 126Mansion is so near to the Blue House that whenever we returned home we would pass by the policemen standing guard there who would, following procedures, question if we lived there. To assure you even further about the safety - there is a resident pup - Shiru the Shih Tzu, who I would say is a great dog, unless you approach to pet him while he's in his sanctuary that is his bed under the table.

126Mansion is a B&B, a cafe, a shop, a gallery and a hosting site for events all at the same time. On ground level is the shop and the cafe, on the second the rooms and on the third the rooftop. Run by a family of friendly ladies, the 2 sisters govern the overall managing of the B&B from bookings to queries, while mom prepares the traditional Korean breakfast every weekday morning and takes charge of the laundry. During our time there they were not hosting any events, but I learnt that they were preparing for guitar lessons the following week after.

The choice to stay here was one governed by the heart; it is pricier than other options we had in mind. There were some minor lags and gaps between the photo gallery offered online and what we saw for ourselves during our stay. The room was not as comfortable or bright as pictured and the rooftop - a place we thought could be a nice place to chill and have a beer or two, was mostly a site for doing the laundry. Even so, with so many of my favourite places surrounding it and with how serene the vicinity was, the neighbourhood 126M is set in is still one that I love dearly.

At Gyeongbukgung, Seoul

If you're starting to get bored by photographic evidence of me in the same navy stripes and pinafore, I'm here to tell you that this will be the last of the instalment. It's just that we covered so many places in a day! 

Living in 126Mansion gave us the super ability to jump from point A to B to C, D and E all in one day. If you can't remember me in this outfit, we started the day here in the main streets of Samcheong-dong and later here in Bukchon Hanok Maeul. When hunger finally kicked in and overpowered the wanderlust (because you can have that even while you're traveling), we went to the famed Tosokchon Samgyetang 토속촌삼계탕  to have what its shop is named for - Ginseng Chicken! The family restaurant is housed in a traditional building, but spacious enough for separate dining rooms. We had lunch later than usual so we missed the insane queuing for the specialty, as recalled by several other blogs. Because we had lunch later than usual, we jumped straight into finishing the bowls of chicken soup that no one remembered to click the camera trigger.

While the sun started to set around 4 in the afternoon, giving us a nice and softer glow, we took the metro the Gyeongbukgung Station and stood amazed by the palace walls, outside of the main attraction itself. Back when I was 11 (a good 10 years ago!) we had come as a family with a tour group and paid for tickets to enter the palace, but most of the rooms as I remember were cordoned off to the public.

As the evening came we set out once again for Insa-dong, which is within walking distance. Insa-dong is a semi-traditional quarter with Ssamzigil mall as its main attraction, being loved by the young Seoulites. The mall houses quirky local shops with rather pricey tags (apart from the poop bread 동빵; poop bread rules), with a open air top floor where couples hung out. Outside of Ssamzigil, Insa-dong remains to adhere to tradition, with shop signs in Korean Hangul instead of English, which is pretty cool to see when you're used to signs like Starbucks and Etude House, but here they appear in Korean instead.